True story: a girl in Texas is talking with her parents’ Amazon Echo and asks it, “Can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” and of course the device orders her a dollhouse (a KidKraft Sparkle Mansion, to be precise).
Then, THEN a TV station in San Diego does a cute “isn’t technology wacky?” news story on it. At the end of the story, the newsanchor chuckles, “I love the little girl saying, ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse.’”
That sentence wafted out into the living rooms of newswatchers, some of whom also owned Amazon Echos (“Echoes”? Echos.). And guess what happened. GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. Yes! Those Echos ordered a bunch of dollhouses!
Okay, it doesn’t sound like thousands of people actually got KidKraft Sparkle Mansions delivered to them, but let’s pretend that’s what happened because I love this story so much. I want CNN to pick up this story. The anchor would say “An inept San Diego news anchor said ‘Alexa, order me a dollhouse’ on the air, and — uh oh.”
And then a million dollhouses get shipped to people (The Echo is currently on backorder until January 25 due to its popularity). The dollhouse company (Amalgamated Sparkle Mansions Incorporated) can’t keep up with demand, so dollhouse prices go way up. Every news outlet in the country does a story about the CNN screwup, which causes a new round of hyper-expensive dollhouse orders, and after that, it’s all anyone can talk about. Late-night talk show jokes, thinkpieces, podcasts, etc. You go over to your friend’s house and start to joke about the whole ridiculous situation and he frantically clamps his hands over your mouth and makes a head-gesture toward the Echo on his coffee table. You didn’t notice it when you walked in or you would have been more careful. You also didn’t notice that the coffee table — all his furniture, actually — is made of KidKraft Sparkle Mansion boxes. Your eyes swell in horror. The Echo, unbidden, starts playing The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
It spreads around the world. Florida sinks into the sea under the weight of all those dollhouses. Amazon goes bankrupt because it can’t handle all the refund requests. Shipping companies go bankrupt because Amazon goes bankrupt. The economy collapses because everyone’s credit card is maxed out on million-dollar dollhouses and no one can ship anything to anyone and civilization ends with a sparkly whimper.
In thousands of years, when the rats evolve intelligence, they’ll be pleasantly surprised to find their housing situation well taken care of. They’ll never invent war or hunger or homelessness because of the bounty we’ve left them, and they will worship us like lost gods. So that’ll be nice, for them.
What I’m saying is: if any of you win an Oscar this year, please say “Alexa, order me a dollhouse” in your acceptance speech. With your help, 2017 can really live up to its potential.
This Sparkle Mansion looks pretty rad, actually.